A former lawmaker accused of submitting fraudulent expense claims to parliament was “heavily addicted to cocaine” and living beyond his means, a court has heard.
Jared O’Mara is accused of committing eight counts of “brazen” fraud while he was Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam, England. It is also alleged he tried to claim about ￡30,000 (US$37,223) of taxpayers’ money using false invoices for organizations that did not exist.
On the first day of his trial at Leeds crown court, a jury heard that O’Mara submitted fake invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body set up to scrutinize lawmakers’ claims after the expenses scandal.
Prosecutor James Bourne-Arton said part of the fraud involved making a fictional charity called “Confident About Autism South Yorkshire” to claim payments.
O’Mara, who was not present in court and attended via video link from his home in Sheffield, denies all charges.
Bourne-Arton said O’Mara, who resigned from parliament in 2019 after two years, was living “beyond his means and in dire need of cash” caused by “funding a significant cocaine habit.”
“It was an invention of Jared O’Mara that he hoped to slip through as a legitimate claim, no doubt seeking to hide behind the fact that it related to his disability if ever challenged,” he told the jury.
The court heard how O’Mara planned to share the proceeds of fraud with his co-accused, his “old friends” Gareth Arnold and John Woodliff — both of whom he employed in his office in 2019.
Arnold, from Dronfield, Derbyshire, was O’Mara’s chief of staff during the 2019 general election and helped submit the expenses, while Woodliff, from Sheffield, was employed on a ￡28,800 salary as a constituency support worker, a role the prosecution said he did not carry out.
Arnold is accused of six counts of fraud relating to the expenses and Woodliff one count of fraud, based on not carrying out the support worker role. Both deny the charges against them.
The court heard how the invoices from Confident About Autism were “in different formats, have inconsistent references and in one case was dated for a date after it was submitted for payment,” Bourne-Arton said.
Shortly after being submitted, the invoices were rejected by IPSA, which had become concerned about the validity of the claims and asked for more evidence.
Around the same time, Arnold went to South Yorkshire police to report the fraud, which he “was no longer willing to participate in,” Bourne-Arton said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS